Following the sinking of a fishing vessel in the Russian Arctic, seventeen of the nineteen sailors on the boat during the disaster are missing. Their chances of survival are very poor due to the extreme weather conditions in this inhospitable and difficult to access region. The Ministry of Emergency Situations said the ship Onega, based in Murmansk, had issued distress signals in the early hours of the morning before sinking off the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, where he was fishing in the midst of a storm. Two people were saved.
The weather conditions make it difficult to use planes for rescue operations. “There is a strong snowstorm, waves of four meters and temperatures of – 20 to – 25 ° C”, told Agence France-Presse Alexeï Barinov, spokesperson for the Ministry of Emergency Situations . According to him, finding someone alive would be a “miracle” at this stage. One person “cannot survive more than 15 minutes in such conditions,” another source confirmed, although no body has been recovered yet.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Michoustine offered his condolences to the families of the sailors. He also ordered the government to give them the necessary support, citing a “tragedy” and confirming that “people have died”.
Similar tragedies in previous years
The two rescued sailors suffered from frostbite, but their lives were no longer in danger. They were recovered by a boat which passed in the vicinity ten minutes after the accident, according to Rouslan Nazarov, a person in charge of the rescue. The ice-covered fishing vessel sank as the crew hauled up a net with a catch. He “lost his balance and instantly turned around,” said Alexei Kravchenko, spokesman for the Russian maritime and river transport agency Rosmorrechflot.
A source, cited by Interfax, clarified that the sailors were in special suits, but did not have time to grab their survival gear. “People were literally swept from the deck of the ship into the sea,” the source said. According to regional authorities, Onega is owned by the Kalinin fishing company, which claims to be “one of the main exporters of Russian fishery products”.
This is not the first time that such a tragedy has hit Russia. In January 2018, a fishing vessel with 21 people on board sank in the Sea of Japan, without any survivors being found after five days of search operations in freezing temperatures and high winds. In April 2015, the sinking of a Russian freezer trawler in the same region killed at least 56 people. In the Barents Sea, 14 Russian officers were also killed in July 2019 in the fire of their submarine, an accident whose circumstances had not been revealed by the authorities in the name of “state secrecy “.
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